Observation as Scientific Proof

Observation as Scientific Proof

A while ago I had a bit of a rant about how some people seemed to think “working” only needed to be concerned with <99% of the time.

Lately, I’ve been seeing a few bright people talk about how observation of something is proof of something else. It’s a logical falalcy that observation of something working means it works in all circumstances. Only the opposite is true, observation of something not working is proof that it doesn’t work in certain circumstances. Yet, these people use it to justify or validate specific logic or API usage. It’s a bit scary.

I my other rant I showed some C++ code that let’s you observe certain behaviour. Certain behaviour of bad code. It’s bad code because it will eventually fail given certain circumstances.

I’m not going to “out” anyone; but it appears despite various initiatives, the software development craft still has a long way to go…